Participatory Computing for Our Complex World
Dirk Helbing (ETH Zurich)
Modeling and Simulation of Social Complexity
and its Relevance for
Understanding Crime Old Problems: External Threats to Society
New Problems: Self-Destabilization of Society
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«Europa ist eine tickende Zeitbombe»
October 12, 2011
Alex (‚Sandy‘) Pentland of the MIT Media Lab Says:
§  Our financial, transportation, health
system are broken
§  We need to develop a
decentralized adaptive approach
§  Managing complexity requires realtime data mining
The more complex our systems
become, the more do we need a
decentralized management concept
based on facilitating favorable selforganization. This requires real-time
data to allow for flexible, adaptive
response.
Our World Has Changed
§
§
Globalization and technological
change have created a strongly
coupled world
We have now a global exchange of
people, money, goods, information,
ideas…
Problems:
1.  World financial and economic
crises
2.  Global terrorism and international
wars
3.  Political instabilities, revolutions
4.  Global environmental change,
extreme weather
5.  Organized crime, cybercrime
6.  Quick spreading of emerging
diseases
7.  Global disruptions of supply
chains
8.  Migration and integration
problems
Network infrastructures also create pathways for disaster spreading
Build platforms
to explore & interact
What for?
People
Turn knowledge into wisdom
What if?
What is?
Create systems
to sense &
understand
Data
Turn data into information
provide data create new technology
Models
Develop models to simulate &
predict
Turn information into knowledge
Platforms
to explore & interact
Global
Participatory
Platform
Innovation
Accelerator
Systems
to sense &
understand
Planetary Nervous System
provide data create new technology
Living Earth Simulator
Models to simulate &
predict
Platforms
to explore & interact
Global
Participatory
Platform
Innovation
Accelerator
Systems
to sense &
understand
Planetary Nervous System
provide data create new technology
Living Earth Simulator
Models to simulate &
predict
Crowd-Sourcing 3D Environments
See also Open Streetmap - the free Wiki world map
More Sustainability and Resilience through
Collective, ICT-Enabled (Self-)Awareness
1.  Goal: Measure the world’s state
and ‘social footprint’ in real
time, detect possible threats
and opportunities
2.  Use smartphones, social media,
digital news sources, sensors…
3.  Incentives to provide data
4.  Control over own data
5.  Privacy-respecting data mining
Requires a ‘Planetary Nervous System’
to answer ‘what is’ questions and a
‘Living Earth Simulator’ to answer
‘what if’ questions.
Painting by Maurits Cornelis Escher
Examples: Open streetmap,
earthquake sensing and warning
Platforms
to explore & interact
Global
Participatory
Platform
Innovation
Accelerator
Systems
to sense &
understand
Planetary Nervous System
provide data create new technology
Living Earth Simulator
Models to simulate &
predict
Building FuturICT’s Living Earth Simulator
§  Integrate existing models (traffic,
production, economic system, crowd
behavior, social cooperation, social
norms, social conflict, crime, war…)
§  Scale them up to global scale
§  Increase degree of detail, accuracy
(statistical and sensitivity analysis,
calibration, validation, identification of
crucial and questionable modeling
assumptions,…)
Modelling the global spread of H1N1,"
combining models of epidemiology and global travel data
Platforms
to explore & interact
Global
Participatory
Platform
Innovation
Accelerator
Systems
to sense &
understand
Planetary Nervous System
provide data create new technology
Living Earth Simulator
Models to simulate &
predict
An Open, Transparent Platform for Everyone
§
§
§
§
§
§
Goal: An open platform for everyone,
overcome “black holes” for data and
data fragmentation
Transparent data sources and quality,
transparent algorithms, transparent
results
Potentials: New services and jobs,
less barriers for social, economic and
political participation
Problem: A new public good, requiring
mechanisms to avoid data pollution,
manipulation, misuse, privacy
intrusion, cybercrime
How to promote responsible use? Need to develop a Trustable Web, a
self-regulating information ecosystem
World of Modelling for Simulation
App Developer Toolkit & Computational Modeling App Store, incl. Commercial Software/Services
Interactive Virtual Worlds
Testing and establishment of different financial architectures,
voting rules, transparency and privacy settings, etc.
Observatories and Exploratories
Observatory for Wars and Conflicts
Terrorist Networks
The Need to Go Beyond Our Common Sense
Geocentric Picture: Epicycles around the Earth
Heliocentric Picture:
Elliptical paths
around the sun
Our Thinking Determines What We See …
…And What We Can’t See…!
We need to overcome the
limitations of our conventional
thinking to understand the
systemic nature of problems!
Strongly Coupled and Complex System Behave
Fundamentally Different
1.  Faster dynamics
2.  Increased frequency of extreme
events – can have any size
3.  Self-organization dominates
system dynamics
4.  Emergent and counterintuitive
system behavior, unwanted
feedback, cascade and side
effects
5.  Predictability goes down 6.  External control is difficult 7.  Larger vulnerability
Change of perspective (from a
component- to an interactionoriented view) will reveal new
solutions!
Need a science of multi-level
complex systems!
Networking is Good … But Promotes Cascading Effects
§
We now have a global exchange of people,
money, goods, information, ideas…
§
Globalization and technological change have
created a strongly coupled and
interdependent world
Network infrastructures create
pathways for disaster spreading!
Need adaptive decoupling strategies.
Are Derivatives Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction?
Buffett warns on investment 'time bomb'
Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction "
Warren Buffett The rapidly growing trade in derivatives poses a "mega-catastrophic risk" for the economy ..., legendary investor Warren Buffett has warned. The world's second-richest man made the comments in his famous and plain-spoken
"annual letter to shareholders", excerpts of which have been published by Fortune
magazine. The derivatives market has exploded in recent years, with investment banks selling
billions of dollars worth of these investments to clients as a way to off-load or manage
market risk. But Mr Buffett argues that such highly complex financial instruments are time bombs
and "financial weapons of mass destruction" that could harm not only their buyers
and sellers, but the whole economic system.
(BBC, 4 March, 2003)
The Flash Crash on May 6, 2010
600 billion dollars evaporated in 20 minutes
The flash crash turned solid assets into penny stocks within minutes.
Was an interaction effect, no criminal act, ‘fat finger’, or error.
Cascading Effects During Financial Crises
Video by Frank Schweitzer et al.
Too Much Networking Can Cause SelfDestabilization: Breakdown of Cooperation
Different recipes, new solutions, and a paradigm shift in
our understanding of the world are needed.
A Letter to the Queen of England
To: Her Majesty The Queen From: The British Academy 22 July 2009
MADAM,
When Your Majesty visited the London School of Economics last November,
you quite rightly asked: why had nobody noticed that the credit crunch was
on its way? … So where was the problem? Everyone seemed to be doing
their own job properly on its own merit. And according to standard
measures of success, they were often doing it well. The failure was to see
how collectively this added up to a series of interconnected imbalances over
which no single authority had jurisdiction. This, combined with the
psychology of herding and the mantra of financial and policy gurus, lead to
a dangerous recipe. Individual risks may rightly have been viewed as small,
but the risk to the system as a whole was vast. We have the honour to remain, Madam,
Your Majesty’s most humble and obedient servants
As Coupling Gets Stronger, System Behavior Can
Change Completely: Traffic Breakdowns
Thanks to Yuki Sugiyama
Capacity drop,
when capacity
is most
needed!
At high densities, free traffic flow is unstable:
Despite best efforts, drivers fail to maintain speed
As Coupling Gets Stronger, System Behavior Can
Change Completely: Crowd Disasters
Love Parade Disaster in Duisburg, 2010
At low densities:
self-organized lane formation, like Adam Smith’s invisible hand
At large densities: coordination breaks down
Crowd Disasters as Systemic Failures
Revolutions: Another Cascading Effect
?
?
Was it a twitter revolution?
The Arabic Blogosphere
Political Cascading Effects
Transition from hierarchies to
democracies (source: Jürgen Mimkes)
hierarchy
transition
democracy
G N P pe r p e r s on in US $
W orl d GNP and f ertility
35 .0 00
h iera rc hies
30 .0 00
tran sitio n
d em oc ra cies
25 .0 00
tran sitio n lin e
20 .0 00
15 .0 00
de m o c r ac i es
10 .0 00
h i e ra r c h i es
5 .0 00
0
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
fe rt i li t y f, c h i ld re n p e r w o m e n
7
8
Food Prices as Triggers of Social Unrests
And Europe Today?
The Positive Side of Social Media
Shutting down the
internet is not a
good idea.
Driving Forces of Human Behavior
3 incentive systems (pleasures)
§  Cognition (“brain”):
insights, feeling of control
§  Emotions (“heart”):
empathy, happiness, fear,
greed
§  Instincts (“stomach”):
survival, fight, muscle use,
adrenaline, vegetative
nervous system
Controlled by different parts
of the brain and the nervous
system
For each individual, the 3 incentive
systems have different weights.
Correspondingly, they behave
according to different principles.
When less satisfaction can be found
via one incentive system, this is
compensated by putting more
weight on another one.
In economically hard times, when
people are unemployed and cannot
get satisfaction by consumption or
social recognition, violence takes
over. Hooliganism, riots, extremism
and wars may result (see also the
Roman governing principle of “bread
and games”).
Violence and Deprivation
It’s not poor economic conditions that cause
dissatisfaction, but their deterioration. Emergence of Social Norms and Conflict
People sanction
and suppress each
other every day to
create social order Strength of population 1
Population 1 sets the norm
Everyone tends
to do what he/she likes
(anomie)
Population 2 sets the norm
Computer simulations:
Red = individuals
preferring behavior 1
Yellow = individuals
adjusting to behavior 1
Blue = individuals
preferring behavior 2
Green = individuals adjusting to behavior 2 Reward of showing preferred behavior / Reward of conforming
Conflict in the Middle East: Possible Future
Scenarios
‘Business as Usual’
Clinton Parameters
Who Decides What is Right or Wrong?
Keep in mind: “Everyone can
become a murderer.” (Criminal
Officer Josef Wilfling)
That is: In many cases crime is a
result of situations, where things
have gone terribly wrong, where
people got off-track.
§  Each new rule creates new rule violators.
§  The regulation density today is so high that
not everyone knows all the rules and
probably everyone violates some.
§  Classification tends to create
discrimination, false positives, and injustice.
War on Terror: Invaders or Freedom Fighters?
“War is a downhill task, peace is an
uphill task.” (It is easy to start a war,
but difficult to establish peace.)
The Fall of the Berlin Wall
Trust, Authority, and Legitimacy Are Interdependent"
Example: The Zurich Migration Office Scandals Migrationsamt-Chef rechnet mit
Polizei: «Situation im Migrationsamt ist
«bleibendem Imageschaden»
eine Zumutung»
Aktualisiert am 11.05.2010 Aktualisiert am 07.05.2010
Establishing Safety? Or Filling Budget Gaps?
Is Surveillance A Good Solution?
“The internet has totalitarian potential.”
§  The Internet should not be
controlled top down (does not fit
democratic principles and would
not work well)
§  Rather apply principles of
decentralized self-regulation (as in
our immune system)
§  Build on transparency, reputation
systems
Prisons as Business Opportunity?
About 1% of US citizens are in prison.
Dangers of Personalization
Risk of manipulation and
over-confidence.
Supporting egocentric
consensus may promote
segregation and conflict
between groups with
different preferences. These questions may have fundamental societal implications.
They deserve and require scientific study!
Eli
Pariser:
The
Filter
Bubble
Why Privacy Is Important
People have to adjust to societal
expectations all the time. Privacy is
needed to recover… and for many
other reasons.
Example: My diary and trust
§
§
§
§
§
§
§
§
Society must be able to adapt.
Institutional paths may not be
sufficient. Possibility of pressure
relief is needed. §
Protection of minorities and vulnerable
people (judges, politicians…)
Stronger interaction causes more
conflict Protection of socio-diversity
The success and adaptiveness of
democracies requires socio-diversity Socio-diversity is also important for
innovation, societal resilience, and
happiness
If there is no protected private space,
people will stop thinking independently,
which undermines the wisdom of
crowds
Public and private are two sides of the
same medal
Privacy is a pressure relief system that
allows people to adapt to expectation
of others during public exposure
If there is no privacy, there is no
intimacy, i.e. partnerships and
friendships as we know them
Managing Complexity: Is It a Lost Battle?
§  In a strongly varying world, strict stability and control is not possible
anymore or excessively expensive §  Example: Public spending deficits
§  Hierarchically organized structures have a critical size, beyond which they become unstable
§  Examples: Decay of Soviet Union; many failed mergers in the last
decade (Daimler-Chrysler, BMW-Rover, Allianz-Dresdner Bank, …) §  A paradigm shift towards flexible, agile, adaptive systems is needed,
possible - and overdue!
Boeing 747: Constructed for stable flight
Su-47: Utilizes dynamic instability
How to Utilize Properties of Complex Systems?
Managing Complexity: Modifying Interactions
Allows to Promote Favorable Self-Organization
Emergence of Cooperation in Social Dilemma Situations
Overfishing,
global warming,
misuse of social
benefit systems,
tax evasion,
free-riding
Red,
yellow:
defectors
(cheaters)
Blue, green:
cooperators
Imitation of the best-performing neighbor, success-driven
mobility, and trial-and-error together can cause an outbreak of
cooperation, but no subset of these social mechanisms
Social Order: How Important is the Protection of
Private Property?
These
results are
for
material
goods.
To be
done:
How far
do IPR
promote
societal
progress?
The Positive Effects of Moderate Noise
Noise can overcome metastable, but suboptimal configurations
Can Social Inequality Promote Cooperation?
HG = Harmony Game, SD = Snowdrift Game/Chicken Game
SH = Stag Hunt Game/Assurance Game, PD = Prisoner’s Dilemma
Is it the reason, why capitalism seems to have outperformed
communism?
How the Rich-Gets-Richer-Effect Can Support
Cooperation
How much inequality is needed for the cooperation-enhancing effect?
How Second-Order Free-Riders Are
Eliminated+Punishment Spreads
D = Defectors (Free-Riders), M = Moralists, I=Immoralists C = Non-punishing Cooperators (Second-Order Free-Riders)
The “Unholy” Symbiosis of Moralists and
Immoralists
D = Defectors (Free-Riders), M = Moralists, I=Immoralists C = Non-punishing Cooperators (Second-Order Free-Riders)
“Lucifer’s Positive Side Effects”
Thanks to all supporters!